


goodnight, goodnight

by kajitsukai



Category: Exalted
Genre: Blindfolds, Bondage, F/M, Not Suitable/Safe For Work, Safewords, Shameless Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-19
Updated: 2016-05-19
Packaged: 2018-06-09 09:54:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6901141
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kajitsukai/pseuds/kajitsukai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So an eclipse and a dawn caste are on a boat...</p>
            </blockquote>





	goodnight, goodnight

It’s not the first time she’s been left unable to see, but it might be the least comfortable. Part of the reason is, despite the truly obscene amount of pillows piled up, laying back on her wings is always tricky to arrange properly, and she can feel that some of the feathers are getting bent. Not that she can fix them--the silk cord that binds her wrists holds each hand down to her side, and she’s not exactly sure where Ram found cord she can’t break but she _really_ doesn’t want to know, anyway.

“...So when do I get to tie you to something like I hunted you, again?”

“When you can ask convincingly.” Sarnai sighs, and feels his hand run through her hair, down to where her earring is tangling in hair, blindfold, and feathers, and pulls it free, gently. She can’t see him, but she can hear him--a breathed out little laugh, the clink of the jewelry he wears, the rustle of silk--Ram is easy to find, easy to track, demanding attention. He is also running his other hand down her chest, and rather unfairly easily, cupping her breast to tease and massage.

“What’s the matter, birdy? This not seeming like such a good idea now?” He does pause what he’s doing, hand still on her breast, while he waits for an answer. She knows he will stop this if asked. That silver tongue and astounding knack for the most underhanded and shady of dealings aside, she is safe in his hands, as anyone else who’s been in them has been. She also knows he will be aggravating and teasing about all of it, because he thinks she’s cute when she’s angry. He told her as much.

“It’s less that it’s a bad idea and more I think asking me to be convincing is not...precisely a fair challenge.” She feels his laugh as much as she hears it, through how it moves his hand and how his weight on the bed shifts, and then she hears the rustle of silk seconds before his lips are on her throat, hot and deliberate. One, two, three, four down to her collar, before he tips her head slightly, so that her ear is turned to him.

“If I meant never, I’d say never.” He never gives her time to question those statements, not before his rough hands and hungry kisses drive the thoughts from her mind. In the foggy memories of the times she’s not in his bed, Sarnai remembers that these are always the moments when she thinks she’s seen a little more of his honest desires. Later, it will occur to her again, and she’ll wonder what it is Ram really wants out of life, but right now all she can feel is his touch, and she strains against the ropes holding her as she squirms.

“You’re so soft…” He laughs it against her cheek, and she shivers from the sensation of his voice, followed by a hand through her hair. “How are you so soft…? _That’s_ unfair.” 

“I don’t want to hear that from you!” Sarnai feels him grin, half a second of warning before the hand on her breast moves very abruptly south, with nimble fingers teasing just enough against her clit to make her jump and squirm and bite her lip to keep quiet. He sits back up a little, and she sighs--he runs warm, always, and the lack of it, however brief, leaves her restless. It doesn’t help when his hands leave her entirely, although she feels his fingers again soon, gently tugging loose a feather that was already half-molted.

“Just because I’m better at cheating doesn’t make it untrue.” Ram’s voice is surprisingly clear for someone who smokes so much, and she turns her head toward it to listen. When she does she feels him pull her other earring free, and the clink of it being set aside.”You get into fights without armor, and your skin’s smooth even where you’re scarred...if you could make a cream out of whatever you’re doing, you’d be able to fund that cult for _centuries_.”

“Always looking for a new scheme…?” He chuckles, but something about it has a darker edge, and Sarnai stills a little, trying to figure out where it comes from. She doesn’t get much time to think of it--there’s a rustle of silk and a dull thud as his shirt hits the floor, and then her own feather is pulled down her stomach. She jerks so hard against the restraint the bed creaks, and suddenly she has to gasp for air. He brushes it low along her hip and down her thigh, leaving her nerves lit behind him as he goes.

“Not today.” She didn’t hear him move without the rustling of his shirt, and so feeling his words against her stomach startles her into noise, a high beeping tone, much to her embarrassment. Ram pauses, and she can tell by the weight of the silence that he is trying _very_ hard not to laugh. Instead, he exhales, hot against her skin, and kisses her stomach, on his way down--from navel, to hip, to her thigh, where he stops again. Her whole being is pulled tight, a mandolin string tuned to the point of breaking. He isn’t always such a tease--there are nights that are frantic, desperate and hungry, where they seek only each other’s skin and warmth, over and over again, until they cannot move any longer. But nights like this one, where no one knows nor will care to look for them until the faraway sunrise, Ram’s mood changes like the river, the only consistency his erosion of her willpower and pride. He will have her profaning gods she didn’t know the names of a week ago, by the time Luna reaches the highest point in her nightly dance. Sarnai knows this, and knows that Ram knows it, and that any contest of wills between them is already decided. 

She also knows that if doesn’t stop being such a Sol-forsaken clit-tease she’s going to have him coughing up his own teeth by noon. 

“ _Ram_ \--”

“Don’t be so impatient, Sarnai…” He purrs her name against the inside of her thigh, and she shudders, anticipation and want pooling hot in her cunt, and she pulls again against the rope, until his hand closes over her wrist to keep her from pulling any harder. “I’m keeping you to myself, tonight.”

Briefly, she is distracted by the touch, not just in how his thumb sweeps gently under the cord, checking for burns, and then back down along her wrist, but in how he has reached under her leg to get there. She feels his shoulder against her ass, and the curve in his elbow against her hip and it is the only way she can tell how he is sitting, and where he is generally facing. There’s no way to know the look on Ram’s face, or why his voice seems to soften, faintly, not through the blindfold.

His hair tickles her stomach when his head dips down, his tongue rough and hot on her clit, and she almost yelps, startled by the movement and how much it burns through her, enough to white out thought. There’s no denying Ram’s silver tongue has more uses than his dizzying, unceasing words, and his hand comes off her wrist to hold her hips steady, just in time for them to twitch and buck at the addition of his fingers. Sarnai has never been so glad in her _life_ he’s remembered to take off his rings, twisting under his steady grip, instinctively trying to press more into the sensation. It is not enough, and she makes a low, frustrated groan between her wheezed attempts to catch her breath--it _should_ be enough. She doesn’t understand why it isn’t enough, when every swirl and twist leaves her unable to breathe, unable to think, but something rests at the back of her brain, an unnamed wanting that leaves her searching for more, _more_ , in the darkness of the blindfold.

When she had first agreed to the dark, thick cloth that hides her eyes (too thick for southern silks, too smooth for regular sheep’s wool, but she feels a familiar soft to it that makes her wonder), and the collection of sashes, cords, and one pair of delicate-looking silver shackles, Ram had taught her a single word, something he reasoned was fairly unlikely to come up normally in these situations. (He had not been terribly amused when she suggested he could not use ‘tea’ were the positions reversed, and had muttered something about tea being combined with sex was a waste of perfectly good tea.) He had told her then, that if she ever needed things to stop immediately, if something hurt or felt wrong or simply wasn’t working, she could use that word, and he’d stop, and they could work something out. He’d also rubbed the dark bruise where she’d bitten him the night before, and grinned, said _Asking normally’d usually be fine, but making you angry is way too much fun. This way, it’s clearly not part of the game._

Sarnai remembers the word now, starts it once and it comes out in the wrong language, curses, and tries again. She feels him jump, startled, and pull away, and the bed shifts as he sits up a little. 

“Sarnai? 

Logically, she understands why he’s moved back from touching her--until they’ve talked about anything, keeping his hands to himself lets her think and communicate clearly. But she can’t find him now, not by touch, only by the whisper of the sheets beneath them, the clink of jewelry and that note of genuine _concern_ in his voice. Something clicks into place, and she’s dimly aware of what she’s realizing, but she doesn’t dwell on it. There are far more immediate things to focus on, after all.

“I…” She has to stop, take a breath, rearrange her sentence back into Flametongue instead of Skytongue (one of these days, she’s going to convince him to learn it), and tilts her head, turning an ear to listen for Ram’s breathing, trying to find where he is. “I want to see.”

“...Not feeling like being blind today, birdy? That’s easy enough.” 

“No, I mean, I want to see your face...to see you.” Ram stops dead, his fingers already hooked under the blindfold to pull it up over her head. Sarnai hears his breathing catch, and sighs; this is part of why she _wants_ to see. Whatever face he’s making now is never one he’d let her see on purpose, and managing to actually surprise him loses some of the victory when she can’t see him react. That train of thought ends a second later, when he kisses her. It’s not violent nor rough, but it is _hungry_ , bright and burning need that even quicksilver Ram can’t disguise, consuming all thought in a haze of lips and teeth and tongue. When he finally pulls away, her lungs are screaming, and the sudden brightness as the blindfold is tugs off makes Sarnai hiss a little, and squinting against the light. 

She cannot read the look on Ram’s face, can’t say she’s even seen it before--something has shifted behind his eyes, so overbright they seem to gleam in the dimness of his room, and he never once breaks eye contact. It’s almost uncomfortable in it’s intensity, and she squirms a little under it, suddenly flushed and self-conscious under his gaze, only to flush harder when he strokes the back of his fingers down her cheek. The naked lust in his eyes is easy to recognize now, at least, but whatever else rattles around in Ram’s head is a mystery to Sarnai now, as it’s ever been.

“...Not a bad look on you,” he murmurs, so soft she’s not sure he meant to say it out loud, and he says no more. It’s this uncharacteristic quietness that makes her most unbalanced, but he gives her no further time to work herself up before he kisses her again, his hands running from her thighs up to her hips, lifting them slightly to enter her without ever coming up to breathe. Even when he does, a few seconds later, it’s only for the briefest of moments, with his eyes meeting hers again before he kisses her, again, and again, and again.

Ram is always relentless, but this is different, wild and uncontrolled, each hungry kiss and desperate thrust jolting through her like an electric shock. Sarnai is only quiet because her mouth is occupied, and while this position presses her back uncomfortably onto her wings, she can’t even register the irritation, twisting and bucking her hips back into him. It isn’t a pace either of them can keep up for long--he only seems to outlast her by sheer force of will, and he presses his head to her shoulder, breath ragged against her skin, while Sarnai is still shuddering from her own orgasm. 

It is a long few moments before he seems even aware of his surroundings again, and pulls the ropes binding her wrists off. He is still quiet, moreso than she’s ever seen him be, but Sarnai is too pleasantly exhausted to find a way to ask about it. Instead, first to her stomach and then onto her side, wings free and properly folded against her back and shoulders instead of spread out. There are more than a few feathers left molted over the pillows and sheets, and she sighs out in a resigned whistle--which Ram mimics a second later, when he reaches out to comb his fingers through her feathers.

“Ram…”

“We’ll figure out what to do with them in the morning...I’m sure someone will pay _something_ ridiculous for a goddesses feathers.”

“That’s not--Ram, I don’t care about that, but--” He reaches over, pressing a finger gently against her lips, and his expression is another one she hasn’t seen before, a weary, almost pleading smile, lopsided and tired.

“...Not now. Not tonight.” He leans back to running his hands through her wings, carefully straightening out feathers that have been mussed out of place before ruffling them and starting over. Sarnai doesn’t answer him, already starting to fall asleep under his touch, but she does chirp once at him, the closest she can manage to conveying her agreement.

The last thing she hears before her consciousness fades is a murmured, mimicked word in skytongue--simply, goodnight.


End file.
